Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Hudak down to minority in new projection, updates to PEI and NL

New polls for the election races in Ontario, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Prince Edward Island were released yesterday.

In Ontario, Nanos released new numbers for CTV, The Globe and Mail, and CP24, showing the Progressive Conservatives at 35.4% to the Liberals' 31.9% and the NDP's 22.8%. This represents a significant drop for both the PCs and the Liberals (6.7 and 5.7 points, respectively) and a large gain for the NDP (up 6.6 points). The Greens stand at 4.1%, leaving an unusually large 5.8% leftover for the others.

I'm not quite sure what is going on with this poll, but if we distribute those five extra points proportionately, we end up with 37.8% for the Tories, 33.9% for the Liberals, and 24.2% for the NDP.

With this poll, the projection has swung against the Tories. They've dropped 0.3 points to 39.1% support, while the Liberals are up 0.1 points to 32.2% and the NDP is up 0.3 points to 21.9%. The Greens are down 0.2 points to 5.5%.

This results in the Progressive Conservatives dropping five seats to 50, four short of a majority government. The Liberals are up four seats to 38, while the New Democrats are up one seat to 19.

The Liberals have picked up two of their seats from the Tories in southwestern Ontario, and the other two in Toronto. This now means the Liberals are projected to win half of the seats in Toronto, and are tied with the Tories at 10 apiece in southwestern Ontario.

The New Democrats gain their seat in southwestern Ontario. They now stand at one in the region as a whole.

This is the second consecutive projection showing the Tories on the decline. Since July, they have lost 11 seats in the projection, 10 of them going to the Liberals and one to the NDP.

There are still a lot of close races in the province. The Tories lead 16 of them and trail in 14, while the Liberals lead 14 and trail in 16. The NDP now leads one of the close races, and is trailing in two others.

That puts the Progressive Conservative range at between 34 and 64 seats, the Liberals at between 24 and 54 seats, and the NDP at between 18 and 21 seats.

The chart above shows how the ranges look when stacked up against one another. This isn't a chart showing exact probability of each party winning X amount of seats, but is simply showing how the ranges overlap, or not. Obviously, any party winning all of the close races or losing all of the close races is very unlikely, which is why the chart has the seat totals nearest to the actual projection as the most probable. This chart also shows how much of the Liberal and Tory ranges are within majority territory.

Full riding projections can be found in the right-hand column or at the bottom of this post.

On to Newfoundland and Labrador, where the Corporate Research Associates peg PC support at 54%, ahead of the NDP at 24% and the Liberals at 22%. Though none of these results are outside of the margin of error in comparison to CRA's last poll in May, what is remarkable about these results is that the NDP is holding on to the support they had in that last poll. To my eyes, it looked like a possible blip. But this poll confirms that the NDP is in the race in Newfoundland and Labrador.

With the results of this poll included, the projection shows the Progressive Conservatives down 6.1 points to 61%. The Liberals are up 0.8 points to 21.1% while the NDP is up 5.4 points to 17.7%.

This shift has resulted in the Liberals picking up two seats from the Tories. The PCs now stand at 42, with the Liberals winning four and the NDP two.

The Liberals pick up one seat in the Avalon and Burin region, and another in the main part of Newfoundland.

This means that the Liberals are only being shut out of the St. John's region.

A few more races are now looking close in Newfoundland and Labrador. The Tories lead in six of them and trail in two, while the Liberals lead in two closes races and trail in three. The NDP also trails in one close race.

This puts the Tory range at between 38 and 44 seats, with the Liberals now standing at between two and seven seats and the NDP between two and three. In other words, the role of the Official Opposition is still at play.

Finally, on to Prince Edward Island. The Corporate Research Associates poll for the province shows some change, with the Liberals up eight points to 59%, the PCs down four to 31%, and the NDP down six to 7%, but nothing groundbreaking. It does seem to indicate, however, that the NDP is not surging in every part of Atlantic Canada.

The Liberals have gained 2.3 points and now lead with 56.7%. The Progressive Conservatives are down 0.3 points to 31.1%, while the New Democrats are down two points to 8.7%. The Greens are up 0.2 points to 2.9% in PEI.

This has not changed the seat projection, which still stands at 26 seats for the Liberals and one for the Progressive Conservatives.

The only thing that has changed is the Liberal range. With the Liberals up and the Tories down, the one riding held by the Progressive Conservatives is now a close riding, meaning that the Liberal range now stands at between 26 and 27 seats, or a sweep. The PC range is between zero and one seat.

Now, a little bit about how ThreeHundredEight.com will be covering the provincial campaigns.

I do not know if there will be a poll for one of the provinces released every day, but I will be updating the projection on a daily basis when there are new polls available. On days with a new projection, there will often be a second daily post on another topic as well.

Weekly Ontario projections will be featured in The Globe and Mail on Mondays, while I will also be appearing on the Téléjournal Ontario on Mondays to speak about the provincial campaign (except for this week, when I am scheduled to appear today). I will also have my usual twice-weekly articles at The Huffington Post Canada, where I will analyze some of the emerging trends of the provincial campaigns, particularly those in Atlantic Canada and the Prairies.

I know this question was asked before on another poll, but can you please show what the projection is based on just this poll. With the liberal and PC numbers down this much and the NDP up so high in Ontario, I am very curious to see how this would affect the seat count. If at all

This may come across as obvious, but the Ontario election is going to be decided in the GTA and Southwestern Ontario. There are many close ridings in both these areas (judging by the projection by Eric) that could go either way. Both of these areas went mostly liberal last election. And while I don't think the liberals will keep all of the seats won, I think they will walk out with a minority like around the 43-47 seat range. The PC will almost tie with them (38-42 seats) and the NDP will almost double their current MPPs (18-19 seats).

But I could be completely off and Ontarians repeat what they did in the May election and the PCs just trounce the liberals!

I think our FPTP system and the current political climate in Ontario would allow the Tories to win a majority with as less as 36-37% of the vote, especially if the NDP vote is this high.

I still think that McGuinty will remain premier under a minority scenario come Oct 7. The Ontario Liberal vote doesn't show signs of collapse like their federal counterparts. The Ontario Liberals are actually campaigning with teeth unlike their federal counterparts who didn't really have a sense of direction.

I think the NDP share will fall back a few points as the election progresses. Layton's passing was only two weeks ago and it still has an effect on polling. Horwath and the NDP are hoping on banking on Layton's popularity, but I think that might backfire. Horwath's campaign tone is also more rural populist, rather than the idealistic feel-good nature of Layton's successful campaign.

If you take the raw vote totals from the last federal election in Ontario (May 2011) and the last provincial election (October 2007) and add them together, the vote share for each party isn't too far off from where they're starting the provincial election:

You know, it's traditional to wait until AFTER the election, before declaring your prediction to have been correct. You don't want to be 308's reincarnation of "Dewey defeats Truman".

As for the "Tea Party" strategy, that doesn't strike me as much of a winner (it's right up there with Ernie Eve's "kitten-eating martian" attack from 2003). It's curious, though, that the Liberals have dumped the "Hudak = Harris" line of attack(which they were using as late as last springand which has the merit of being credible). Could it be that, since they're now running the biggest deficits since Bob Rae, comparing Hudak with Harris doesn't look like all that great an idea? Just putting it out there.

Gee, if the Liberals are hanging their hats on Eve's August 30th quote in the local Ottawa paper (or his subsequent, and more retrained comments on AM 640 in Toronto), they're really stretching. Have you heard the clip? (Warren Kinsella's blog is torqueing it for all it's worth - which isn't much). To call it a "serious attack" on either Hudak or the PC party is laughable - which is probably why it hasn't been picked up outside of the blogeshere.

I know it seems a little fishy to me too. With every other poll showing that the libs are simply gaining on the PC, whereas this apparent Harris-decima poll not only shows that the libs are closing the gap, but are leading by a decent margin.

All I'm saying is that if this is true, than as said, it is a huge turnaround. I only found it on wikipedia's page for this election, which has a link to Ontario news watch. I don't know, it could be true!

It could, but it was done for a private organization. Was the voting intentions question tacked on at the end of a survey that included a lot of other questions, specific to this particular event? We don't know - unless it is reported by Harris-Decima or in the media, not as a "leaked" poll, I won't be including it.

McGuinty has done a good job and everyone in my family (except my paternal grandmother who votes for the NDP) will be voting for the Liberals because Hudak just doesn't look like the trustworthy leader we expect in the Premier's Office.

On an unrelated note, it appears that in the Manitoba riding projection, the winner (NDP) of "Fort Richmond" appears to not be highlighted like the other ridings.

the sample size is 650 in the HD poll, and with the time period coinciding with other polls that totally disagree with it, I think that maybe it's the 1 time out of 20 that a poll fails. Might I suggest waiting until another poll comes out that validates the results before including it in your projection?

Even if a poll is affected by small number statistics, it still has non-zero information; it's still roughly half as good as the ~2000 people polls. Unless the polling methodology is wrong - but it's probably not (H-D is pretty reputable). Eric weights low responder number polls in some fashion (which I'd guess is sensible, I'm not sure).

"The telephone survey included a relatively small sample size of 650 and was conducted between Aug. 26 and Sept. 6. However, Mr. Anderson said answers to the questions were consistent over the nearly two-week period, suggesting, he said, that voters may not be happy with some of the things the governing Liberals have done, but they are not upset enough to want a Conservative government. "

so much anonymity... the globe can write what it wants and you can believe what you want about the poll. I'll continue to believe what I stated above until we see another poll corroborating the results.

It is interesting to see Hudak be the 2nd straight PC leader to shoot himself in the foot when a win should've been a cakewalk.

The NDP is who I'm watching closely this time. Their 20% rebate if you hire a new person should be a big vote getter, especially vs what the Liberals & PC's are doing (incentives to hire immigrants). If they can do well in the debate I'd watch out for 1990 to repeat.

Not something I want, but that is what I see in the way this election is going.

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